


The Gladiator Snippets

by fourfreedoms



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gladiators, Alternate Universe - Roman, M/M, Man this snippety thing has everything!, Nate's sister may be mental, Too lazy for the difficult bits, bodyguards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The series of snippets I wrote in 2010 about Brad as a gladiator and Nate as a Tribune finally strung together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gladiator Snippets

Ignore my complete and utter fuckery of accepted historical fact. I couldn’t very well have Nate sneaking into the ludus magnus to get his rocks off, could I? Ugh, setting this in the time of empire was an ill-conceived notion. OH WELL, we’re here now.

*

He’s Suione. The man in the ring. Tall, with his blond hair shorn short. Nate doesn’t understand anything about the games, but he knows the Suione is good. He clips the Baktrian fighter in the jaw with the hilt of his sword and then dumps him in the sand. The crowd roars and the Suione bends down and rips out his throat, raising up again with crimson stained fists. Nate drops his eyes, and when he raises them up again he finds the Suione staring right into his box, gaze arrowing straight through him.

“Is he looking at me?” Nate’s sister breathes, grabbing at his elbow. “He’s so strong and graceful of form.”

“Could be,” Nate says softly, unable to look away from him anymore than his sister.

*

Nate agrees with great reluctance to go with his friends to the Ludus Magnus. He’s never had much stomach for gladiators, but Servillius and Clodius won’t stop badgering him until he agrees to come. Nate sighs and allows himself to be dragged out.

The ludus is saturated with the smell of sweat and a sharper mettallic scent that Nate thinks of as anger and fear. They’re quickly shown the gallery by a circumspect slave, and Clodius and Servillius laugh and joke with each other, wondering if the Barbarians facing off even had the facility to speak. Nate’s only half paying attention, but still he doesn’t know why he’s surprised to see the Suione, running through forms in the practice ring with a wooden sword. He stops, watching the way the Suione’s muscles bunch and shift under his oiled skin.

“I see that the Suione has caught the young tribune’s eye,” the master of the ludus says. He sticks his tongue in his cheek and turns to the slave. “Summon Brad.”

Nate colors. “No, please, I importune you not to…”

His protests fall on deaf ears.

*

So let’s say that Nate’s sister does something stupid the next time they go see the games and somehow the timely intervention of Brad saves her life, so as a reward Nate’s dad purchases Brad as a household slave and as a bodyguard for Nate’s sister. Because, you know, Nate could protect her, but the next time Nate’s legion goes off conquering he has to leave and obviously can’t take her with him. Also, he is a very important man and must go off time-wasting with other wastrels of the senatorial class. Thus, enter Brad, the bodyguard.

*

There were a good number of young men in the domus aside from Nate himself, but the sudden importation of the Suione—Brad, the lanista had called him—caused a stir. He was one of the tallest men any of them had ever beheld. Nate had only seen taller off the African coast.

Nate kept stumbling upon him standing to the side, taciturn and still. He seemed so curious, unlike anybody Nate had ever met. He found Brad’s steel-eyed gaze slightly daunting. Nearly every time he came across him Nate felt compelled to ask Brad about himself, but every time he was brought up short by the memory of the awkward audience at the ludus, Brad standing before him, arms held to his sides relaxed, like horse flesh on display. The thought made his stomach turn.

He walked out onto the peristyle seeking some sun and found Brad engaged in a near silent game of tabula with his adoring sister. He backed right out again onto the hem of his mother’s dress.

“Nate, what is the meaning of this?” she said, tugging her skirts away from his feet. Two slaves reached out to straighten the stola he’d pulled into disarray.

He bit his lip. “I apologize, I find myself out of sorts.”

She batted the slaves away and shot him a hard look. “You’ve been out sorts for nearly a fortnight. Whatever has possessed you to wander around like a timid rabbit?”

“I…” he didn’t answer quickly enough.

She looked past him at the little garden terrace where Brad and Julia were playing. “Is it the Suione?”

“No—”

“You faced down Decebalus’s warrior hoards. Surely you aren’t unnerved by a simple gladiator?”

“Mother, I do not fear him, he simply—I am unsure of his measure.”

She nodded. “I fear little Julia is in love.”

Nate sighed.

His mother’s eyes sharpened upon him. “Try to master yourself. We have so little time before you leave us for Petra.”

Nate spread his hands before him in supplication and contrived to make a quick exit.

A few days later Nate found himself unable to sleep, he finally accepted defeat when with the weak dawn light streamed in through his window. He pulled on a simple tunic, two thick red vertical stripes down the fabric indicating his status, an outfit he was rarely without. The domus was deathly silent. Everybody else was safely ensconced in their beds.

When he went out into the atrium, he found Brad, clad only in subligaculum, running through sword formations on the fine sand. His body shone with sweat and he seemed so engrossed, moving with a quickness that his size should’ve made impossible. His two swords seemed to spin around him. Nate must’ve made some sound, because Brad’s sword arm dropped to his side and he rotated swiftly around.

“Apologies,” Nate said and then cursed himself silently. He hardly needed to apologize to a slave in his own home.

Brad dipped his head and stepped back, ceding Nate space on the sand. Nate hesitated for a moment and then stepped off the slate tile to join him. It couldn’t hurt anybody to train with Brad, maybe he would even tire himself enough for rest. It certainly wasn't the worst idea he'd ever had.

He ran through a few quick stretches and rotated his shoulders to loosen them. Everything felt stiff and tight, like he was an old man, not a youth in his prime. He didn’t know whether it was nerves or poor rest. He kept his back turned to Brad, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate at all if he looked at him.

Brad said suddenly in unaccented latin, “I make you uncomfortable.”

Nate caught his breath and turned to look over his shoulder at him. He could lie, but that would only make him a fool in the face of what they both knew well. “Yes.”

“Julia speaks much of your exploits. She says they expect you to be made praetor soon and be given command of your own legion,” Brad replied. “Surely you cannot be afraid of my blade.”

Nate laughed, rotating fully around to face him. “I am not afraid of your blade, Suione.”

“Really,” Brad said dryly with a small smile.

Nate held out a palm for one of Brad’s swords. Brad handed it over wordlessly and then struck up a defensive posture with the other. Nate lifted his chin and tested the weight and balance of the wooden weapon before nodding. He struck first, a test swipe that Brad caught with his sword just above his chest.

“Not bad,” he said with tilted head. Nate rolled his eyes and traded a series of quick blows as Brad pressed in. Brad had the advantage of both strength and reach, but Nate was more agile. They fought playfully but intently, neither holding an advantage for long. Brad had an untheatrical utilitarian style when he wasn’t fighting in the ring and he appeared tireless. Nate wiped sweat out of his eyes and only narrowly escaped being smacked with the flat of Brad’s blade. He deflected the blow and struck back, Brad’s parry strong enough to rattle his arm. Brad raised his brows at Nate’s expression.

Nate narrowed his eyes, and stepped back, giving himself a moment, before pressing in again with a flurry of strikes. Brad defended himself, finally appearing to lose ground. Nate feinted with his sword and then followed it with an open-fisted strike to Brad’s chest that knocked him to the sand. He knelt over him, ready to put the sword to his throat, but Brad kicked out from under him. The world spun around him and he found himself on his back, wrists pinned to the sand, with Brad leaning over him.

He breathed in harsh gasps, blinking up into Brad’s impenetrable blue gaze. He was helpless in the face of Brad’s wrestling tactics. If he was honest, he was helpless before Brad entirely. Brad shifted and his thigh lined up perfectly with Nate’s sudden awkward erection. It forced a hiss out of Nate’s mouth and he could feel his face flame up.

“Ah,” Brad said, like suddenly he understood everything. He whispered, “Do you yield?”

“Yes,” Nate replied softly, desperately wanting to shut his eyes against Brad’s unreadable stare, but unwilling to surrender that ground as well. Brad leaned down and pressed their mouths together, catching Nate’s startled outward breath in his mouth. He nibbled on Nate’s lower lip hard enough to cause pain, but than smoothed it with the flat of his tongue. Nate moaned and tipped his head back further on his neck, straining for more. It was wrong, against everything he'd been taught, but he felt drunk, insensate to anything but Brad's lips.

Brad pushed his tongue into Nate’s mouth and let go of one Nate’s wrists to cup his jaw. Nate sighed and arched up against him. He dragged his freed hand along the groove down Brad’s back, settling his fingertips at the dimples above Brad’s spine, pressing down to push their hips closer together. Brad made an agonized sound and tore his mouth away.

Nate’s eyelids fluttered over his eyes, and when he finally focused he found Brad staring down at him, face flushed and eyes glassy. Nate took hard breaths hard, heartbeat pounding in his head. Brad's lashes dipped down against his cheek and he reached one long fingered hand out to run tentative fingers along Nate’s swollen lower lip. The light touch burned and Nate shut his eyes and dropped his cheek back to the sand. Brad lingered a moment longer and then rolled off of him. He got to his feet, back to Nate, hitching one of the fallen swords up from the sand. Nate was slower to get up.

“Forgive the impropriety,” Brad said softly, muscles in his shoulders tense.

Nate swallowed and said, “I see no impropriety to forgive.” He straightened his tunic and disappeared back to his room.

*

So this time a fight breaks out somewhere when Nate and Brad are accompanying Nate’s sister out. Nate’s sister just attracts trouble. And Brad and Nate totally kick everybody’s ass, but Brad gets slashed across the back pretty bad and Brad is like…not taking care of it, and Nate finally bullies him into letting him take a look.

*

Nate gestured at the table with one hand. Eying him, Brad sat down stoically. The table wasn't very high, but he was tall enough that his feet still touched the floor. This room wasn’t much in the way of an infirmary, but all the herbs were stored here, and a steady fire was kept burning in the corner. It had been the logical place to go.

Nate hissed when he peeled the heavy blood-sodden fabric off of Brad’s skin. The slash was deep and still wept blood freely. “It needs cauterizing,” he says softly, running his fingertips over the unbroken skin just above it. Brad’s skin was unbelievably soft. He knew he shouldn’t be touching him like this. Brad had made it clear he didn’t want it and Nate would sooner die than force someone. Brad shifted under his touch and his tunic fell down low enough that Nate could see the dimples just above his ass. He pulled his hands back and swallowed. “You will have a scar.”

Brad huffed out a breath. “It will not be the first.”

Nate winced. The wound had to be cleaned first and after he stuck a hot iron into the fire to heat, he crushed gallium with a mortar and pestle and mixed it with freshwater before dipping a castoff skein of fabric into it. The muscles in Brad’s broad back spasmed as he gently swabbed the cloth over the wound. When he thought it was clean, he used the wet rag to pull the handle of the iron out of the fire. It took barely a second to run it over the wound, but it felt like an age. The hiss of hot iron against wet bloodied skin was almost unbearable. Brad didn’t make a sound but the muscles in his neck tightened, thrown into sharp relief in the dim lighting.

By the time Nate tossed the iron aside Brad was breathing hard, head bowed on his neck. Nate stared at him for a long moment, the planes of muscle in his back, the knob at the top of his spine where his head was bowed. He wanted to say something but everything was stuck in his throat. He decided finally it would be best to leave him, give him a few moments to himself. Brad was owed that much. But as he walked by, Brad’s arm snapped up, catching him around the wrist.

“Wait,” he said, urgently.

Nate turned back to look at him. Brad dropped his eyes, his striking blonde lashes lit up like gold when the firelight caught them. He shifted his grip on Nate’s wrist and ran his thumb over Nate’s pulse. Nate couldn’t help shivering. Brad raised his eyes again. “I want…” he said and cut himself off.

Nate hesitated for a long moment, holding Brad’s gaze, and then finally went for it, crowded between Brad’s thighs, catching his chin in his hands. “You can have.”

Brad was only letting him kiss him. Nate had no illusions about this. Nevertheless, it was a victory. Brad’s mouth was surprisingly soft and yielding. For all he had imagined and examined and worked himself to hardness thinking about that day in the atrium, Nate realized that he remembered very little but the sound of Brad’s breaths in his ears and the harsh press of their bodies. The reality was better.

Brad ran his hands down Nate’s back, the sound of his fingers skimming over fabric the only noise in the quiet dark room. He pulled Nate closer to him, and Nate couldn’t help wrapping an arm around his neck, mindful of his wound. A moan broke its way past Nate’s lips and Brad bit at the corner of his mouth in response. It was like going too fast in a chariot. But that wasn't right, either. Nothing had ever felt like this. Memento Morii. Remember, you are but a man. Nate hooked his fingers inside the flimsy layer of Brad’s tunic, nails scraping over warm skin. He breathed hard through his nose, devoting all his attention to worrying at Brad’s lip and stroking over the long planes of his skin. He deliberately grazed the edge of his thumb against Brad’s flat nipple, savoring the small almost imperceptible way Brad’s hips jumped against his.

A sudden shattering sound forced them abruptly apart. Nate shot him a look, taking in Brad’s flushed face, his glassy blue eyes, the way he tightened his fists on the edge of the table. Nate shook himself and went out into the hall to see what had happened. A slave had dropped a jug of wine and was quickly picking the pieces up, cursing herself for her clumsiness. Nate shook his head and went back into the room. He found Brad, back turned to him, pulling his tunic back up over his shoulder.

“At least let me bind the wound!” Nate protested.

Brad’s gaze was flat and he said, “I should get back to your sister.”

Nate wilted inwardly. He stepped clear of the door so that Brad could pass him. “Yes, I imagine you should.”

*

Nate received the summons to the front two days after the rains started. He wasn’t ready to go. Something alien had taken up residence inside him, made his heart heavy at the thought of leaving. He had never been particularly attached to home, not like the men under his command who talked of their fruit orchards and their pretty wives, the best wine they missed almost as much as their children. He loved his family, but their absence was simply absence. This time was different. The summons had been unwelcome, rather than the promised adventure of previous campaigns.

As it rained, he lingered in the peristyle, just under the overhang, watching the packed earth turn to mud. It suited his mood.

“Your sister said I would find you brooding,” Brad’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. “She would like you to read to her.”

Nate breathed out through his nose and turned around. “You will have to teach me to walk as you do, Brad, so that I may startle others as affectively.”

“It is quite simple, you put one foot in front of the other,” Brad replied, lips quirked to show he was fighting a smile.

“Of course,” Nate said. “Would that it were so simple.” Something in his tone of voice caught Brad’s attention, because his chin lifted up and his impenetrable blue gaze narrowed. Nate shook himself. “Take me to my sister then. Best not to leave her waiting.”

*

The next few days were consumed with trips to the armorer and farrier. He needed a new saddle made in the current style, newly died chitons and tunics, and a sea of personal supplies and rations. He went out carousing with the young men he came of age with, simply because it was expected. The entire time he stared down into his wine and thought of Brad playing Tabula with his sister.

“Are you nervous, then?” Opiter asked, from across the table. “I thought nothing could shake you. Not even mighty Decebalus.”

“I am not afraid,” Nate replied, setting his cup aside and leaning his chin on his fist.

“A woman, then,” Tullus said, nudging his shoulder, “You’ve wedged yourself so firmly between her thighs, you fear to ever come out again.”

Nate snorted and took a long swallow, emptying his cup.

“Upon my life,” Tullus said, staring at him in wonder as he wiped his hand across his mouth. “It is a woman!”

“It is no woman,” Nate replied, disdainful.

“Unbelievable, Nate, the fool, has fallen in love!” he said, thumping the table with his fist in mirth. He called out to the friends who were gambling at knucklebones at another table, “Servitius, Decimus, you won’t believe this! Nate’s got himself a bit of skirt hidden away.”

Servitius and Decimus turned immediately, twin expectant expressions on their faces.

Nate dropped his head to the table. “Upon _my_ life, how do I put up with you?”

Tullus laughed. “I’m wealthier than you are.”

He returned to the domus well past drunk. Servitius and Opiter had to help him down off his horse. “I detest you,” Nate said, arm slung over Servitius’ shoulder. “You and your never ending bottles of wine.”

Servitius gave him a good thump on the back, getting him through the front doors with the help of a slave. “Had to send you off in style, old friend. Kill some Dacians for us, will you?”

Nate snorted. “This…this is not style,” he struggled with the words. “This is excess.”

Laughing, his friends departed. The slaves tried to usher him back to his quarters, but Nate resisted, breaking free of their hold. “Leave me.” They stared at him for a moment, wary and unused to drunken behavior in the domus. Nate sighed. “I wish only to go to the peristyle.”

They backed off with raised hands and he pushed past them, forcing his way out into the night air. He slumped ungracefully over a bench. His spine felt like jelly. The air was cool for once, the humidity had broken with the rains. He lay back across the marble, staring up at the stars made visible by absent clouds. It seemed lonely. The horrible alien feeling returned.

“I thought the disturbance of my sleep might’ve been you,” Brad said, appearing at the open doors. He was backlit and Nate couldn’t make out his features at all. He groaned and tried to push himself up into a sitting position but gave up when his arms gave out. Brad snorted with amusement, stepping into the open colonnade. “I never would’ve thought you couldn’t hold your drink.”

Nate made a noise in the back of his throat and made an expansive gesture. “I rarely partake.”

Brad shook his head. Nate could almost fool himself that the gesture was affectionate. “Your sister said you should’ve been bound to the Collegium Pontificum.”

“She is…young and foolish,” Nate replied, struggling. As he continued his words gained surety. “When you have seen the evils of drink, the way a sore head after a long night can turn the entire tide of a battle, or a man against his companion, or a husband against his wife…” Brad’s face was expressionless. He sank to the ground, back leaned up against Nate’s bench. Nate felt like he needed to say something. “We both know I’m no priest.”

He decided he wanted to be on the ground beside Brad, but it ended badly, tangling himself up in his own tunic, landing hard on his knees. Brad chuckled softly as he grunted and fought to right himself. Brad pulled him back up with a solid tug on Nate’s arm. He didn’t let go, even when Nate was solidly seated.

“I…” Nate started. Brad interrupted him by pressing his mouth to Nate’s. Nate made a noise in the back of his throat and deepened the kiss, one clumsy hand coming up to frame Brad’s face. He had dreamed of this. Dreams that had left him aching, spilling into his bedclothes like a youth. Brad tugged on the arm he still had in his possession, drawing Nate onto his body so that he lay between Brad’s thighs. It was an emasculating position, leaned up against Brad’s chest like a fragile maiden, but Nate felt no loss of dignity. He simply continued kissing Brad, tangling their tongues together, memorizing the soft skin of his vulnerable throat, the taste of his mouth, the way their fingers interlaced, Brad’s callused palm as rough as his own.

Brad pulled his mouth away and Nate cried out in frustration. “I forget myself. You forget yourself,” he said in response, turning his head away as Nate sought to kiss him again.

“I don’t care,” Nate replied, turning Brad’s head to look at him. “Not tonight. Tomorrow I will care. But not…” He captured Brad’s mouth again. He shoved him onto the ground, holding him down with a hand placed in the middle of Brad’s chest that somehow remained steady like he expected to struggle. Brad didn’t struggle.

Nate stroked a thumb over Brad’s lower lip, dipping the tip into his mouth. He couldn’t see the color of Brad’s eyes in this light, but he imagined the precise shade of crystal they would be. “If I am seen, what else is there to do? I must already go.”

He raised himself to his knees over Brad, straddling him. He reached down to tangle his fingers into Brad’s subligaculum, fighting the fabric until his fingers found a way inside. He wrapped his fist around Brad’s cock and took in the way Brad moaned, back arching off the ground.

“When was the last time you took yourself in hand?” Nate asked, pulling back the foreskin and pushing the knuckle of his thumb just under the head so that Brad’s hips jerked and he cried out a second time. He started stroking, a slow punishing glide up and down Brad’s perfect cock. Perfect like everything about him.

“The cautery,” Brad whispered back, voice harsh, breaths coming faster. Nate smiled, warmth rushing down his spine. He ducked forward, sealing their mouths together as he continued stroking. Brad bit at his mouth and palmed Nate’s ass, fingers kneading into the flesh almost to the point of pain when Nate flicked his thumb into the slit.

He came with a cry into Nate’s mouth, one hand flying up to still Nate’s moving wrist. They remained like that for a long moment. Silence punctuated by their ragged breaths. Nate nuzzled Brad’s cheek before finally rolling himself off all his determined grace leaving him.

“You don’t want—” Brad started and then stopped. It was the first time Nate had ever heard him sound tentative.

Nate sighed. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he said, and lifted his head to look down his body before dropping back to the ground again.

Brad laughed. He actually laughed. Nate threw out a careless arm, thumping him across the chest. “Shut up.” Brad caught his hand, fingers tight over Nate’s pulse point. He gentled his grip, fingers sliding across the skin over and over in a gesture that was meant to be tender, but was more of a torture in Nate’s current state.

“I wish that you were my slave,” Nate said, staring up at the stars once more.

“So that you could take me with you?”

Nate turned to him in surprise. He blinked and shook his head. “So that I could free you.”

Brad’s face was back to its classic impenetrable mask, but it softened under Nate’s gaze. “You wish an impossible thing.”

Nate shook his head, wishing desperately that he wasn't drunk. That he could find the right things to say. All the came out was, "I know."

*

There was no triumph when he returned to Rome. No pomp and circumstance. They were losing, and Romans did not return until they had turned the tides. He would not have returned from the front at all if his father wasn’t close enough to death that his mother had sent for him—even upon his promotion to legatus. And now that he had left, he would not return to the cold shoulders of the Carpathians for some time, because the heavy duties of heading their house had begun to totter onto his shoulders. Nevertheless, the entire journey over, he kept going over battle plans in his head obsessively. Thinking occasionally to send a skin full of detailed plans back behind him, before having to face the truth again of his own departure from his men. He couldn’t stop. Troop formations and resupply issues followed him into his dreams. He thought more than his family, he missed his bed.

He was tired—coated by dust and mud from several days hard ride. Although his red cloak still drew the eyes of those he passed on the narrow cobbled avenues. They moved out of his way. He remembered a time when this was a new prized ability—something he relished. It felt like decades since then. He’d run through several horses to get here, and while every instinct told him to hurry those last furlongs to his home, he couldn’t make himself raise his horse to more than a sedate trot. It wasn’t dread, this reluctance, more like cowardice. He wrapped the leather of his horse’s reins around his fingers tight enough to whiten the flesh. He almost didn’t feel it. He wondered when exactly he’d stop feeling like a siege machine, a shield, a bellowing voice on the field, and be simply a man again.

He guided his horse into a bustling square. The crowds shifted for him on cue, and a voice, screamed his name. “Nate! Nate! NATHANIEL!” He looked to the left.

A figure broke through a tight knot of bodies and Nate realized he’s staring at his sister running toward him. Her burnished curls streamed behind her and her skirts flapped like wings—ever the spectacle. He was happy to see her, but he couldn’t stop himself from scanning the crowd behind her for her blond shadow. He found him, inevitably.

Brad met his gaze with an expression that told him he understood. It was a second-long interaction, but it seems like days. Julia reached his horse’s side and it danced away, skittish. He gentled it with a steady hand and then swung down from the saddle to pull her close.

“You smell like the stables,” she said into his chest.

He laughed, running a hand over her hair. “How did you know I would be here?”

“I had it from Adrastia that a world weary legionnaire with bottle-green eyes had passed through the gates.”

“By gods, she must have several fleet-footed spies, I have been from the gates barely half an hour.”

Julia giggled. “I do not ask her methods.” She grew serious under his gaze, reaching up to touch his face. “You have a scar.”

Brad finally ambled over, arms crossed.

“I have several,” he replied evenly, meeting Brad’s gaze over Julia’s head.

“But none so noticeable as this,” she returned, drawing his head down for a closer look. She whispered, “It barely missed your eye.”

“It was nothing,” Nate answered, voice firm.

She pursed her lips and nodded, stepping away from him. “Come, Brad, let us show my erstwhile brother home.”

*

So Nate goes to see his dad when he gets home. It’s angsty. Nate’s dad tells him to run for senate and Nate’s like, “But I don’t want any of that,” and Nate’s dad is like, life sucks, get a job, I’m dying, bitch. We’re skipping this bit because it’s not like anybody cares about it anyway.

*

He lounged in the bath, the first one he’d had that hadn’t been drawn from frigid lakewater in months. It was not considered polite to swim in a bath, but Nate couldn’t help submerging himself in the hot water to float along the tiled bottom. His head felt quiet down there—empty of anything other than the sound of his own heartbeat. When his chest burned with the effort of holding his breath he finally swam back to the surface.

Nate looked up, suddenly conscious of his nakedness, even in the cloudy herbed water of the bath. He watched Brad silently walk down the marble steps into the bath, white linen plastering itself to his body. He swallowed. Julia once compared Brad to Apollo, but there was too much of the icy fjords and sharp mountains in Brad to compare him to the sun god.

He picked up the cloth an attendant abandoned, dipping it just under the surface of the water. Nate opened his mouth to ask him what he was doing, but found himself at a loss. Brad didn’t offer any explanation as he guided Nate around with the same skittish hand Nate had used on his horse. He washed Nate’s back with efficient and impersonal hands. And yet Nate still found himself aroused.

“Does my sister know you are here?” he asked, voice choked as Brad’s fingertips slid over his shoulder blade.

“No,” Brad replied.

“You play a dangerous game,” Nate said softly.

Brad chuckled. “Send me away then.”

Nate leaned back against Brad, resting his head on his shoulder. “I can never find the strength, where you’re concerned.” His skin burned pleasantly from mingled desire and contentment.

Brad wrapped his arm around Nate, dropping his nose to the curve of Nate’s shoulder. “How did you come by that scar that so worried your sister.”

“My horse was lamed by an archer in battle. I broke my arm in the tumble, and could not easily defend against the enemy intent on poking my eye out.” Nate laughed, and raised his hand to the line that slashed down along his cheek bone. “I assure you the broken arm and the loss of the horse was far more trouble.”

Brad snorted and stepped away from Nate. “Your sister calls.”

“You have the ears of a deer.”

“Mmm.” He pulled himself out of the pool and nodded once to Nate before disappearing into the halls of the domus, seemingly unaware of his sodden state. Nate felt chilled. He sank back down under the water and contemplated the other mess of things. He would have to take a wife soon, father a son, continue the cursus honorum as all fine Roman sons must.

*

Nate was enjoying a glass of warmed wine in his quarters late when Brad returned to him. “When your father dies, I will be yours,” he said, abruptly.

Nate set the glass down. “I am intent on freeing you.”

“What if I am not intent on going?” He crossed the room and lay brazenly on Nate’s bed.

“Brad, your family, your home, for a few moments of stolen pleasure?”

“They are gone,” he replied, matter-of-fact.

Nate rose out of his chair. “I didn’t kn—”

“You couldn’t know,” Brad interrupted.

“I will marry, Brad,” Nate said after a long moment.

Brad cocked his head on Nate’s pillows. “And will you think of what it could have been like when you fuck her?”

Nate laughed. The word sounded almost more vulgar with Brad’s slight accent. “What happened to the man who would barely touch me?”

“He was a slave,” Brad replied.

Nate walked over to the bed, dropping down to Brad’s side and bending to kiss him. Brad moaned and dragged Nate on top of him. Nate sighed and deepened the kiss, framing Brad’s face with his hands. He feared this is what he’d been missing all along. What had made the front so miserable, when his previous postings had been fine.

Brad took him apart slowly, piece by piece. Stripping off his tunic, hands skirting over every inch of skin Nate would’ve given freely, but Brad had denied himself. He shoved all the pillows off the bed and pinned Nate’s wrists to the mattress as he kissed and bit at Nate’s mouth.

“In my homeland there is no one like you,” Brad said breathing hard. His fingers stroked down Nate’s cock.

“What, foolish?” Nate replied after the moment his brain required to process anything while Brad was touching him.

“Idealistic,” Brad answered.

*

He fucked Nate slowly and thoroughly, looking into his eyes to catalogue every gasp, every blink the whole time. It was Nate’s undoing almost more than the hand on his cock, or the feel of Brad’s hard prick moving in and out of his body. They fucked for hours, careful nevertheless, to be quiet. Their world seemed to close down just to the two of them, like sliding under the water in the bath.

Brad came just after Nate did, kissing Nate to muffle his own groans of release. Nate felt a rawness and vulnerability for the first time in Brad and he held on tight to that moment, doing his best to memorize every inch of that feeling.

He had the sudden terrifying revelation that he was troublingly in love with Brad.


End file.
